WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama
will attend a memorial service Sunday in Newtown, Conn., the site of Friday's
deadly elementary school shooting.
Twenty-six people,
including 20 children, were killed when a man opened fire inside the school. Hours
after the shooting, a tearful Obama said he grieved first as a father. In those
remarks and later in his Saturday radio address, Obama called for
"meaningful action" to prevent such shootings, but did not say what
it should be.
Obama's visit to Newtown
for an interfaith vigil would be the fourth time he has traveled to a city
after a mass shooting. The president had planned to travel to Maine on
Wednesday for an event promoting his positions in "fiscal cliff"
negotiations, but the White House canceled that trip because of the shooting.
The gunman behind the
Connecticut elementary school massacre stormed into the building and shot 20
children at least twice with a high-powered rifle, executing some at close
range and killing adults who tried to stop the carnage, authorities said
Saturday.
He forced his way into the
school by breaking a window, officials said. Asked whether the children
suffered, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver paused. "If so,"
he said, "not for very long."
An official with knowledge
of the situation tells The Associated Press three weapons were found inside the
school and fourth weapon was found outside.
The murder weapon was a high-powered rifle with a high capacity, popular
with law enforcement and the military.
Police shed no light on
what triggered 20-year-old Adam Lanza to carry out the second-deadliest school
shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators
had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to
use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the
why." He would not elaborate.
Friday's massacre has
elicited horror and soul-searching around the world.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says
the "innocent little boys and girls" were "taken from their
families far too soon." Investigators have questioned the gunman's
older brother, who's not believed to have been involved in the rampage at Sandy
Hook Elementary in prosperous Newtown, 60 miles northeast of New York City.
Relatives of a Connecticut
woman fatally shot by her son before he killed 26 people at a school then
killed himself say in a statement they share the grief of the Newtown community
and the nation. A sheriff in New
Hampshire, where Nancy Lanza once lived, read the statement Saturday, saying the
family is trying to understand "the tremendous loss." Rockingham
County Sheriff Michael Downing said Lanza's brother James Champion, a retired
police captain in Kingston, N.H., and other relatives express their
"heartfelt sorrow." Another officer said, "The whole family is
traumatized by this event."
Champion would not discuss
what might have triggered his nephew to go on the shooting spree. Nancy Lanza's family described her as kind and
loving. She was once a stockbroker for John Hancock in Boston.
Mourners gather inside the St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church at a vigil service for victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School. (Associated Press)
